Dysfunctional Families

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Mom and Christmas

Well, it sounds like Mom might finally be getting used to the idea (after about 2 yrs of this) that I will not be around my sister. When we’re in a larger extended family setting when we have about 25-35 people, I’ll be there even if my sister is. It’s funny, because you can see her slowly trying to get within earshot to try and listen in on my conversations. In the past, when she’s done this, within a few days I would get a phone call from my mom yelling at me about something my sister THOUGHT she heard me saying to someone else. My sister can’t hear well. She’s had several problems with her ears over the years and it’s affected her hearing. So once again, I would have to calm my Mom down and remind her that my sister cannot hear well – and that when she’s trying to eavesdrop on my conversations, she’s not hearing what she THINKS she is.

However, this year, I asked when everyone was showing up at mom and dad’s for the extended family x-mas. She said that my sister and her family and my brother would be showing up at 10a. Then the rest of the family would be coming over at 12:30-1p. I told her that we would be coming over around 1p then. She hesitated, but then said OK. She used to try to “fix” things and put herself in the middle of it all. That just made things worse.

At Thanksgiving, my sister tried to talk to me on a couple of occasions. I ignored her. And of course she did it in front of some younger cousins who don’t know what is going on. So, her manipulative intentions were to make me look like a mean person to those younger cousins. Of course I wasn’t going to talk to her like everything is “OK” between us. And she knows it.